Those graphic anti-abortion images are disgusting. What is even more disgusting is the way that Rightists - especially religious Rightists - shove those images in the face of everyone else, including very young children. I think that is child abuse; no child should have to deal with the trauma of being exposed to that sort of graphic violence.

Somehow I don't think that terrible graphic truck image was driven there by a Tea Party Infiltrator. No, no... that's the real authentic child-abusing Tea Partier mentality right there.

Or maybe I am all wrong? Perhaps that is not, in fact, an anti-abortion image... Perhaps it is an infant who was killed and charred by one of our fine military people in Iraq or Afghanistan??!

Jeremy,you are soooooooo predictable. Same stupid talking points, same regurgitation of propaganda, same hatred, same old same old, same old. Like a broken record.

You should lay off the recreational pharmaceuticals.

By the way, what have Democrats ever done for people pf color except enslave them. First as property. Then they created a new slavery and plantation. They called it welfare and housing projects. The racist elitist Democrats created the war on poor people.

Funny how no projects were built in liberal suburbs. Funny how liberals moved to all white areas to get away from Blacks and Hispanics. Funny how you people are such fucking hypocrites.

What I find amazing is that Obama continues to allow the CIA Predator drone strikes that MURDER Afghan babies and the left allows him to get away with it. Sure Bush was the original murderer, but Obama could have canceled it on Jan 20th 2009. But he hasn't. Not only that, but he's intensified them.

Well Alex,When they do not have the power, they are anti-war. When they have the power assassinating Americans living in Yemen with drones, bombing neighborhoods, family gatherings, pharmaceutical plants, baby formula plants, sending our boys off to be killed is perfectly acceptable.

When conservatives do this, it is murder, genocide, assassination. when the left does it it is statistics.

So who parked the abortion truck conveniently in the background of your carefully framed photograph, Ann?

And come on Ann, isn't the real reason you're posting this photo to tar the Tea Partyists as anti-abortionists? Folks who had nothing whatsoever to do with those vans.

Geez, Ann, why not just pay someone to carry an "I Hate Niggers" sign while you snap away.

Your photo slimes the people in the foreground and deliberately places them in a false light, people who had nothing whatsoever to do with that truck in the background.

I hope they sue you for defamation and infliction of emotional distress.

It's despicable what you're doing with these photographs, Ann. You're deliberately framing Tea Party Americans as a bunch of fucking whackjobs and by carefully framing your photographs placing innocent individuals in a false light and publishing those photographs.

New Ham - if those people are in the photograph then they are implicitly anti-abortion whackjobs. I mean come on, I would have noticed the truck and fled immediately. This is why I won't attend any rallies, too many whackjobs around.

Trooper York - anyone who knows my history on this blog knows I lost it after the 2008 elections. I raged and raged for days. But I couldn't do what New Ham does, months at a time. His blood pressure must be pegging by now.

New Ham - I know you feel THE RAGE. But if you look at history as a continuum you're realize that we'll get through this.

Ann Althouse - a government official we pay with our tax dollars - has sickeningly joined them by posting highly edited photographs designed to expose innocent people in the foreground to public ridicule by placing them in a false light illegally. We have laws against publishers doing this for a reason. It's wrong and immoral.

Ann Althouse owes her readers an apology for her over-the-top depictions of honest Americans participating in the political process as a bunch of anti-abortion nuts just because some third party parked a truck on a public street near a protest.

It's sickening what Ann is doing - deliberately editing blood red photos to heighten the redness and cropping a photograph in such a way as to cast innocent people in this false light.

I don't know if she is that deliberate. She just likes to take weird photos of strange juxtapositions. It's not malicious.

I encourage you to click the larger black and white photograph, Trooper.

The "red version" has been highly edited, admittedly by Ann herself, to showcase the abortion truck and make it even redder than it was in real life. She deliberately goosed the saturation to increase the redness on the bloody fetus in the background on the side of a truck that was parked near this meeting of innocent Americans.

She has also highly cropped the photograph to make it appear as if the truck is central to the Tea Party protest, when in fact, it is parked quite a ways away. she's deliberately done this so as to create the impression that the people in the foreground support the message in the background.

If you look at the original photograph (which Ann has desaturated) on Flickr, it is apparent that this red-colorized photograph (which she has labeled in a post "abortion") was deliberately altered to place those innocent Americans into a false light.

They likely had nothing to do with that truck being parked there and except for Ann Althouse's deceptive editing of the photograph, it is obvious to any general observer that the truck itself or its presence parked on a public street is hardly representative of the views of the people she slimes in the foreground.

She's trying to slime innocent people.

What she is doing is deliberate, it's despicable, it's immoral and I'm certain that it is illegal.

I have often felt that your pictures of or with people are not nearly as good as your other photographs. But this one begins to approach the striking quality you seem to effortleessly achieve with your non-people pictures.

This is no different than what Ann has done. She's made the blood-soaked fetus more red, deliberately altering the photograph she took to create a false light impression and using that photograph to hold the innocent people in the foreground up to public ridicule.

The first rule of public streets is that anyone can park any truck anywhere they want to on them.

But when you have useful idiots like Ann Althouse to edit your propoganda photos, then I guess you just have to go with what you have.

Frankly, I think Ann Althouse (who, after all, is part of the elite set of government workers making hundreds of thousands a year in taxpayer salaries and pensions) will find that many of her readers don't appreciate this deliberate sliming of their newfound political party.

I'm implying that she's deliberately editing and framing photographs she is taking at Tea Party events to place people in a false light.

That truck wasn't put there by the Tea Party. It's a private individual expressing a view that is not being expressed by anyone at a Tea Party rally.

It's offensive what she's done and she should be called to account for it.

This is no different than the Democrats planting racially offensive placards in the crowd so they'll be seen in photographs - except that Ann is deliberately cropping her photographs to create this false light impression and is deliberately editing the blood-red fetus to make it even bloodier.

That's sickening. It's also illegal to place the people in the foreground in this false light in this way as a way of holding them up to ridicule.

I have no idea what her motives are. I expect she's pro-abortion and that is her motive for sliming these innocent Tea Party Americans who probably don't even know that truck is parked there and certainly don't have the power to do anything about it being in the background of her highly-cropped photograph.

Perhaps she can explain herself.

I doubt she'd deign to lower herself to our level to explain how this photograph is anything except a lie she has created.

"That truck is momentarily stopped at a light, not parked. There's a driver visible inside if you enlarge it. Those people in the photo probably never even saw it since they were facing away from it."

I can't tell if it's parked, or moving since it's a still photo and because the truck is so far away from the actual crowd of activists, but the people in the foreground who Ann is holding up to public ridicule certainly seem oblivious to it even being there.

It's almost like someone momentarily held up a "I Hate Black People" sign and Ann snapped a photo of it just to create a false narrative. This is no different.

It's obvious what she's doing - from the blood-red fetus she deliberately edited to the tags she chose for this post. She's trying to tar these specific Tea Party Americans as rabid anti-abortionists.

It's highly unethical what she is doing with these altered photographs.

"How could anyone think the people in the foreground are responsible for a truck that goes by in the background?"

You tagged the post "Tea Party" and "abortion." You cropped the photo to deliberately highlight a passing truck and attempt to make it central to the scene when it was merely passing by on a public roadway.

You titled the post "A Tea Party Composition ..." as if to link the Tea Party protest with the abortion sign.

You're clearly deliberately trying to create linkage between the abortion truck and the people attending the Tea Party protest in the foreground.

"It's just something interesting that happened that makes the viewer think."

But it didn't "just happen" as you say.

You altered what happened. You edited the photograph to create a scene that was not true. You changed the colors to make the fetus bloodier. You deliberately cropped the photo so that the casual observer would think that it was central to a Tea Party protest. You tagged the post "abortion" and "Tea Party" to reaffirm this linkage.

These things didn't "just happen."

You made them happen. Deliberately.

This viewer thinks you're despicable. And you would do well to remember that publishers live by laws in the United States. And that it is illegal to publish photographs that are deliberately edited so as to depict innocent people in a false light for the purposes of holding them up to public ridicule.

The east is red, the sun rises. China has brought forth a Mao Zedong. He amasses fortune for the people, Hu er hei yo, he is the people's liberating star. Chairman Mao loves the people, He is our guide, To build a new China, Hu er hei yo, he leads us forward! The Communist Party is like the sun, Wherever it shines, there is light. Wherever there is a Communist Party, Hu er hei yo, there the people are free!

As the 04-15 New York Times' (you know: that paragon of rightist sentiment) poll on the tea partiers reveals, people who self-identify with the tea party movement share with the poll's general public's respondents almost exactly the same conviction that economic issues are most important right now (78% for the former vs. 80% for the latter) and even more nearly the belief that social issues are equally unimportant: 14% vs. 13%. Thus the prevalent left-wing meme that the tea parties have been taken over by right-wing social and religious extremists is completely false.

I prefer the composition of the black and white photo. I like the tree in the center flanked on either side by the two buildings, the planted flags and the way the people are all looking different directions. It captures the tone, growth and uncertainty of the movement.

For me, the colored photo doesn't have the pull or interest of the B and W. But I like the invitation to take a second look.

For judicious use of red and brevity of title, I'm voting for Rhhardin's Red with Dog

Some Guy|4.17.10 @ 12:58PM|#earlier I happened to peruse a new CBS/New York Times poll detailing the attitudes of tea party activists, who, it turns out, are more educated than the average American, more reflective of mainstream anxieties than any populist movement in memory

I read that poll, too. Convenient confirmation that the Tea Party is no more interested in reducing deficits than anyone else. They want "smaller government" except for anything that they get personal benefit from.

I wanted to go to a Tea Party and ask everyone in attendance whether they wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, then tell anyone who replied 'no' to shove their signs up their lying asses.

That's a great point. Most teabaggers are flaming hypocrites when it comes to spending. I especially love it when the media catches 'baggers with their Medicare cards!

I happened to peruse a new CBS/New York Times poll detailing the attitudes of tea party activists, who, it turns out, are more educated than the average American, more reflective of mainstream anxieties than any populist movement in memory

88% of this "tax movement" in that same poll didn't know their taxes went down last year. educated perhaps. Informed, uh no

I think that is child abuse; no child should have to deal with the trauma of being exposed to that sort of graphic violence.

As a follow-up to the above, you might want to reflect on how a simple medical procedure to remove an unwanted growth from a woman's body could qualify as "graphic violence".

It seems to me that you are playing into the hands of the religious right by implicitly arguing that the fetus has been the victim of violence, and that a picture of it is more disturbing than, say, a picture of an uncooked pot roast or some other unimportant piece of meat.

As a follow-up to the above, you might want to reflect on how a simple medical procedure to remove an unwanted growth from a woman's body could qualify as "graphic violence".

It seems to me that you are playing into the hands of the religious right by implicitly arguing that the fetus has been the victim of violence, and that a picture of it is more disturbing than, say, a picture of an uncooked pot roast or some other unimportant piece of meat.

Oh, fuck you, you stupid cocksucking Alinskyite motherfucker!

You seem to think that because I find the image disgusting, I must be on the Democrat "side" and be all pro-abortion and all that.

Well, I'm not on their "side".

If there is one thing I hate about modern America, it's the fact that the country is filled with irritating assholes like Revenant who assume that everyone falls into either the Democrat Left or Republican Right camp.

How could anyone think the people in the foreground are responsible for a truck that goes by in the background? It's just something interesting that happened that makes the viewer think.

Oh, come on. I don't think that truck being there was just a coincidence. Those disgusting anti-abortion images are intended to be noticed in the most provocative way. Even if the truck people are not Tea Partiers, it's likely they knew the Tea Party thing was going on and specifically brought the truck there to be seen.

Julius, I certainly think the truck was there to be part of the event, but I don't think the people who are standing and facing the other way have any idea it's there or any connection to it. They are all just different things/people attracted to the same event. It is what it is. The abortion truck would probably pull up to a pro-choice rally too.

And really... the graphic photo? It's no worse than what shows up on prime time network "forensic" television. My kids are older now, but the small kids I know seem to take something like Bones or CSI pretty much in stride.

Unless it's the subject matter more than the graphicness? Maybe small children will be harmed by the idea that people kill babies?

I can see how that might upset kids. I suppose that they ought to be protected from any suggestion that they feel insecure about the world they live in.

Sort of like terrorizing them about dying polar bears or the world burning up or flooding or other AGW catastrophe.

You seem to think that because I find the image disgusting, I must be on the Democrat "side" and be all pro-abortion and all that.

I figured my post would push your buttons whichever side you were on. It worked.

irritating assholes like Revenant who assume that everyone falls into either the Democrat Left or Republican Right camp.

It is funny that a person who rants about "Rightists" would complain about people being pigeonholed. :)

Anyway, I wouldn't assume the truck was part of the rally. There's a similar sign truck here in San Diego that circles around downtown whenever any major public event takes place there -- Padres games, Comicon, you name it. I assume they're aiming to shock as many people as possible and/or get on TV.

HD--you may see only white but you hear only Olbermann--May want to check some recent polling data on the composition of the tea party movement--that assumes of course you can read, and think--two unlikely assumptions.

Further to your 4/17/10 5:09 P.M. comment, Lenin said it, and Alinsky cited it in Rules for Radicals, although I paraphrase here;When they have the power we exact change through the ballot. When we have the power, it is with the bullet.

But (as someone already mentioned) Wisconsin is pretty much all white.

It's like Minnesota that way. Other than pockets of newly arrived Somalis and a few places in only the very largest urban centers with significant African American populations... not only are these states white... they're primarily Scandinavian. A Southern European looks down-right swarthy.

In all likelihood the Tea Party rally in Madison accurately represented the demographics of the state.

But don't expect that to stop HDhouse making an ignorant statement attempting to extrapolate unrepresentative data from a local area to the rest of the nation.